I ended up leaving a bunch of my meetup groups and networking events and their respective Discords, and also decided to take down my studio streaming setup, because they were all wearing on my mental health. I want to get back to working on stuff because I want to, not because I feel obligated to “grow my audience” or whatever. My fun activities were starting to be less about fun and more about my failure to get any sort of cachet, and something had to give. And I didn’t want that “something” to be the things I enjoy doing.

It’s totally fine to want to do things, but it’s important to realize why you’re doing things, and be willing to course-correct when you realize that those things are getting in the way of the intended purpose.